Erik Prine, founder of the now-defunct mercenary firm Blackwater and current chairman of Frontier Services Group, is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and other federal agencies for attempting to broker military services to foreign governments and possible money laundering, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the case.

Erik Prince, left, chairman of Frontier Services Group, looks at a map of Africa with Deputy Chairman Johnson Ko. FSG, which is backed by Chinese capital, is based in Hong Kong.

Photo: HKEJ

What began as an investigation into Prince’s attempts to sell defence services in Libya and other countries in Africa has widened to a probe of allegations that Prince received assistance from Chinese intelligence to set up an account for his Libya operations through the Bank of China. The Justice Department, which declined to comment for this article, is also seeking to uncover the precise nature of Prince’s relationship with Chinese intelligence.

Prince, through his lawyer, Victoria Toensing, said he has not been informed of a federal investigation and had not offered any defence services in Libya. Toensing called the money-laundering allegations “total bullshit.”

The Intercept interviewed more than a half dozen of Prince’s associates, including current and former business partners; four former U.S. intelligence officers; and other sources familiar with the Justice Department investigation. All of them requested anonymity to discuss these matters because there is an ongoing investigation. The Intercept also reviewed several secret proposals drafted by Prince and his closest advisers and partners offering paramilitary services to foreign entities.

For more than a year, U.S. intelligence has been monitoring Prince’s communications and movements, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence officer and a second former intelligence official briefed on the investigation. Multiple sources, including two people with business ties to Prince, told The Intercept that current government and intelligence personnel informed them of this surveillance. Those with business ties were cautioned to sever their dealings with Prince.

Erik Prince Sought to Recreate a Blackwater-Style Operation

In 2010, amid public scandals and government investigations, Prince began to sell off his Blackwater empire. Using new vehicles, he continued to engage in controversial private security ventures, including operations in Somalia and the United Arab Emirates. Eventually, the former Navy SEAL and self-proclaimed American patriot began building close business ties with powerful individuals connected to the Chinese Communist Party. In January 2014, Prince officially went into business with the Chinese government’s largest state-owned investment firm, the Citic Group, and founded Frontier Services Group, which is based in Hong Kong. Citic Group is the company’s single largest investor, and two of FSG’s board members are Chinese nationals.

Despite the provenance of FSG’s funding and Prince’s history of bad publicity, Prince was able to recruit an impressive line-up of former U.S. military and intelligence officers to run the company. Key to Prince’s ability to retain such personnel, given FSG’s ties to China, has been the firm’s strictly circumscribed mission, which does not include military-related services. FSG is a publicly traded aviation and logistics firm specializing in shipping in Africa and elsewhere. The company also conducts high-risk evacuations from conflict zones. Prince has described his work with FSG as being “on the side of peace and economic development” and helping Chinese businesses to work safely in Africa.

But behind the back of corporate leadership at FSG, Prince was living a double life.

Working with a small cadre of loyalists — including a former South African commando, a former Australian air force pilot, and a lawyer with dual citizenship in the U.S. and Israel — Prince sought to secretly rebuild his private CIA and special operations enterprise by setting up foreign shell companies and offering paramilitary services, according to documents reviewed by The Intercept and interviews with several people familiar with Prince’s business proposals.

Several of the proposals for private security services in African nations examined by The Intercept contained metadata in the digital files showing Prince and his inner circle editing and revising various drafts.

Since 2014, Prince has travelled to at least half a dozen countries to offer various versions of a private military force, secretly meeting with a string of African officials. Among the countries where Prince pitched a plan to deploy paramilitary assets is Libya, which is currently subject to an array of U.S. and United Nations financial and defence restrictions.

Prince engaged in these activities over the objections of his own firm’s corporate leadership. Several FSG colleagues accused him of using his role as chairman to offer Blackwater-like services to foreign governments that could not have been provided by the company, which lacks the capacity, expertise, or even the legal authority to do so.

FSG’s CEO, Gregg Smith, a decorated former U.S. Marine who deployed twice to Beirut in the 1980s, vehemently denies the firm’s complicity in any such efforts by Prince.

“FSG has no involvement whatsoever with the provision of — or even offering to provide — defence services in Libya,” Smith told The Intercept.

“To the extent that anyone has proposed such services and purported that they were representing FSG, that activity is unauthorized and is not accepted or agreed to by the company.”

Smith said that any proposals advanced by Prince in Libya were not made on behalf of FSG, explaining that the company “has strict protocols in place and has a board-level committee to review any high-risk project, which would certainly include any proposal” involving Libya.

“He’s a rogue chairman,” said one of Prince’s close associates, who has monitored his attempts to sell mercenary forces in Africa.

That source, who has extensive knowledge of Prince’s activities and travel schedule, said that Prince was operating a “secret skunkworks program” while parading around war and crisis zones as FSG’s founder and chairman.

“Erik wants to be a real, no-shit mercenary,” said the source.

“He’s off the rails exposing many U.S. citizens to criminal liabilities. Erik hides in the shadows … and uses [FSG] for legitimacy.”

Last October, FSG’s corporate leadership grew so concerned about Prince’s efforts to sell paramilitary programs and services that the board passed a series of resolutions stripping Prince of most of his responsibilities as chairman.

FSG also terminated the contracts of two of Prince’s closest associates within the company after management became suspicious that they were assisting Prince in his unapproved dealings, according to two people with knowledge of FSG’s inner workings. Smith declined to comment on internal FSG personnel matters.

In recent months, FSG employees became alarmed when they began to hear reports from sources within the U.S. government that their chairman’s communications and foreign travel were being monitored by U.S. intelligence. According to three people who have worked with Prince, his colleagues were warned not to get involved with his business deals or discuss sensitive issues with him.

“I would assume that just about every intelligence agency in the world has him lit up on their screen,” said one of the people advised to avoid Prince.

A slide from a 2015 proposal for a private military force to help “support Libyan sovereign control.” Prince’s lawyer denies he has ever engaged in “anything regarding defence” in Libya.

Prince developed the paramilitary services proposal for Libyan officials in 2013, before FSG was created, according to documents and two people familiar with the pitch. He made several trips to Libya to meet with government officials there.

The Libyan proposal, reviewed by The Intercept, was code-named Operation Lima. It offered the Libyans an array of military equipment and services — including weaponized vehicles, helicopters, boats, and surveillance airplanes — to help stabilize eastern Libya. The ground force, according to a person involved with the plan, would consist of a troop of former Australian special operations commandos. Given the instability of the government and Prince’s inability to navigate complex Libyan factions to vet potential partners, he had trouble finding the right power brokers to help sell the proposal.

By May 2015, Prince had rebranded himself and claimed a legitimate public reputation as FSG’s chairman. Without the approval of FSG’s management, he returned to Libya offering a freshly repackaged proposal, according to a person involved with the plan. Rather than a counterinsurgency force, Prince proposed a similar set of equipment and services, but with a new justification: The mercenaries would be there to engage in border security.

According to an internal slide presentation, Prince’s private force would operate in Libya for the stated purpose of stopping the flow of refugees to Europe. Libya is one of the main routes for migrants trying to enter Europe from eastern Africa and parts of the central Sahel region.

Prince told colleagues that he received preliminary approval for the border force from a senior Libyan official, but would need to secure European support to loosen up restrictions on Libyan money and weapons, which would otherwise impede the plan, according to a person who discussed the proposal with Prince.

By exploiting European fears of a mass exodus from the Middle East and North Africa, Prince believed he could obtain political buy-in from Europe to bring a foreign force into Libya.

Prince arranged a meeting in Germany to pitch the plan and also shared the proposal with the Italian government, according to two people familiar with his drive to drum up support for Operation Lima. In Italy, Prince found only lukewarm interest, according to a person with knowledge of the effort. The Intercept was unable to confirm the German response.

One slide from Prince’s Libya proposal stated that military trainers and surveillance planes would be provided by Frontier Services Group. Prince is FSG’s chairman, but the company’s CEO denies the company approved — or was even aware — of this proposal.

Prince’s May 2015 proposal for the Libya operations suggested,

“Funding can be jointly shared by the E.U. and Libyan government from Libyan Investment Authority money frozen in European Banks.”

However, according to two people involved in the proposal, Prince grew frustrated with the failure to get European help in releasing the frozen Libyan funds, and began looking for other ways to get his border force funded.

By then, the U.S. government was already investigating Prince for possible weapons deals in Africa, according to the former senior U.S. intelligence official and the former intelligence official briefed on the matter. In the course of the surveillance operation for that investigation, U.S. intercepts revealed Prince appearing to discuss efforts to open bank accounts in China to help his Libyan associates.

“Money laundering for Libyan officials using a Chinese bank — that is the issue that pushed it over the edge” for the Justice Department, said the second former intelligence official.

The U.S. spies monitoring Prince soon discovered that he had traveled to the Chinese-controlled peninsula of Macau in an effort to open a bank account, according to two people familiar with the investigation. A well-connected source within the Macau banking community told The Intercept that Prince first attempted to open an account at the Macau branch of a European-connected bank, but was denied after a review by the bank’s European headquarters.

Later, Prince travelled to Beijing, where he met with Chinese agents from the Ministry of State Security, according to the second former intelligence official and a source familiar with the meeting.

In January, Prince returned to Macau and opened an account at the Bank of China, according to several sources, including the second former intelligence official and the source with close connections to Macau’s banking community.

“It was not a personal account,” said the former U.S. intelligence official briefed on the investigation.

“He was doing it for the purpose of what is considered now — in the investigation — money laundering on behalf of the Libyans.”

“When he has legitimate business, he does legitimate business,” said Prince’s lawyer.

The CEO of FSG China is a former Chinese security official who was once described by a defence trade publication as “Prince’s right-hand man in China, oiling the wheels of his relationship with the government.”

“If Erik is fucking around with the Chinese, I don’t even want to imagine what the U.S. government is thinking about,” said Prince’s close associate with in-depth knowledge of his activities.

Toensing, Prince’s lawyer, confirmed that Prince successfully opened an account with the Bank of China. “He opened an account on behalf of a business,” she said. Toensing declined to say for which business he opened the account, but said that it complied with U.S. banking regulations. “This is not an FSG bank account,” a spokesperson for FSG told The Intercept.

As for Prince’s alleged meetings with Chinese intelligence, Toensing confirmed that Prince had met with internal security officials in Beijing, but claimed it was in connection to medical evacuation operations. Toensing was unable to answer allegations that Chinese intelligence assisted Prince in setting up a bank account in Macau because she could not reach Prince, whom she said was not in the United States.

“What he told me about visiting China was that he was there selling his book and he’s given various speeches there,” she said.

While Prince’s re-invented Libya “border security” proposal was framed as a means of stopping migration, sources with knowledge of Prince’s business strategy allege that he had greater ambitions in that country. One person involved in Prince’s plan said the anti-migration force was seen as a vehicle for Prince to build a “backdoor” for so-called kinetic, or lethal, operations in Libya — a form of mercenary mission-creep.

“During the day, you do interdiction of migrants — not kinetic,” said the person involved in the plan.

“But those routes are used by weapons smugglers and drug traffickers at night. Insurgents too. Erik’s guys can then be offered to the Libyans to help with their other problems. That’s how you get kinetic.”

The plan called for a series of “border security” bases housing intelligence centres, helicopters, surveillance airplanes, and weaponized vehicles. Prince proposed a fully equipped, contemporary military force to be staffed in part by foreign mercenaries.

“This is Erik Prince using the refugee crisis in Europe in an effort to put mercenaries on the ground in Libya,” said Malcolm Nance, a former U.S. Naval officer who trained special operations forces and has extensive experience in Libya since the fall of Qaddafi.

“They think they’re going to solve the migration problem with technology and a bunch of Western mercenaries?” Nance, who reviewed a copy of Prince’s plan provided by The Intercept, called the proposal “fantasy baseball.”

Government Investigation Focuses on Violations of U.S. Defence Export Regulations

Among the concerns of government investigators is that Prince’s attempts to provide defence-related services to Libya and other countries violate U.S. defence export regulations. Under federal law, U.S. citizens seeking to offer military services or technologies to Libya must have a license certifying that the services or articles are approved under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, or ITAR.

“Many of these services and articles are designed to kill people or defend against killing people,” said John Barker, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for export controls. “To protect U.S. national security and foreign policy as well as that of its allies, the U.S. requires prior authorization.”

FSG officials told The Intercept that the company has no such licenses, nor has it sought them.

“Since our inception, FSG has had bright-line policies against the provision of defence services and the purchase of U.S.-origin items that might be ITAR-controlled,” said Smith, the CEO of FSG.

The State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, which issues the licenses, told The Intercept that it would not comment on what licenses companies possess or lack, calling them “proprietary corporate data,” and asserted that information on the licenses is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. The Intercept has a long-standing FOIA request with the State Department seeking information on licenses granted to Prince and his former network of companies. To date, no information has been provided.

According to documents reviewed by The Intercept, as recently as 2014, Prince was registered as a defence services broker with the State Department through a limited liability corporation in Delaware, Westcomi LLC. That registration would permit Prince to engage in brokering without further authorization for some transactions in some countries, but not in Libya. Even with a valid brokering registration, according to legal experts, Prince would still need to get State Department approval for specific deals and report them to the U.S. government.

“He could not solicit or promote the brokering of defence articles such as armoured equipment delivered from abroad, or engage in or make a proposal to engage in brokering activities, absent prior U.S. government approval,” said Barker, the former state department official.

An FSG official said the company did not know if Prince obtained a license for his activities in Libya, but noted that he did not have one in his capacity as FSG’s chairman. One of Prince’s Libya proposals reviewed by The Intercept lists FSG as the commercial vendor for the project.

Last October, concerned about Prince’s unsanctioned international activities, FSG’s board approved a resolution clarifying that the company does not “engage in activities that require ITAR licenses.” A State Department spokesperson declined to comment, saying, “We are restricted under Federal Regulations from commenting on specific defense trade export licensing activities.”

Prince’s lawyer, Victoria Toensing, told The Intercept:

“I’m not going to get into what licenses [Prince] has.”

“You push the buttons on the company, but the main bad guy gets away and does it again,” said an official who tried to prosecute Prince.

Prince has run up against ITAR in the past. In 2010, Prince sold most of his equity in the companies that fell under the Blackwater umbrella. Claiming that left-wing activists, Democratic politicians, and lawsuits had destroyed his companies, he left the United States and became a resident of Abu Dhabi. The remnant of his network was renamed Academi LLC. Federal prosecutors eventually attempted to prosecute Prince’s former companies, culminating in a 2012 deferred prosecution agreement to settle a lengthy list of U.S. legal and regulatory violations committed from 2005 through 2008 when Prince was in charge, including ITAR violations.

A senior official involved with the Blackwater-related litigation, who has since left the government, told The Intercept that the Obama administration’s continued willingness to award contracts to former Blackwater entities while the case was active was a fatal impediment to a successful prosecution. The official, comparing the former Blackwater empire to a drug syndicate, added that prosecutors could not get anyone under Prince to testify against him personally.

“This is very much the concern,” the former official told The Intercept.

“You push the buttons on the company, but the main bad guy gets away and does it again.”

No criminal charges were filed against Prince.

In federal court filings, Prince’s former companies admitted to providing — on numerous occasions during Prince’s tenure — defence goods and services to foreign governments without the required State Department licensing. In some cases, they admitted to providing services even after failing to obtain a license from the State Department.

As part of their settlement with the government, Prince’s companies ultimately agreed to pay nearly $50 million in fines and other penalties and to implement compliance procedures to ensure such illegal activities did not continue. In September 2015, the deferred charges were dismissed after the U.S. government certified that the companies had “fully complied” with all of its conditions.

At that point, Prince was already deep into creating new companies registered outside of the United States and appeared poised to return to the conduct that had marked his time at the helm of Blackwater.

An internal document from Prince’s inner circle, reviewed by The Intercept, shows his team openly discussing the need to avoid U.S. and international defence export regulations and to mask the involvement of Prince and his cohort in efforts to provide mercenary services and military equipment to foreign governments. “Erik is always pressing the limits as to what is possible,” said the close associate of Prince’s.

“From March 20 to March 23 Russian Air and Space Forces conducted 41 sorties around Palmyra, Homs province, hitting 146 military terrorist targets. Six command centres, 320 terrorists, five tanks, six artillery systems, two ammunition depots and 15 vehicles were destroyed,” the bulletin read.

Syria has been mired in civil war since 2011, with forces loyal to President Bashar Assad’s government fighting numerous opposition factions and extremist groups.

On February 22, Russia and the United States reached an agreement on a ceasefire in Syria, which took effect on February 27.

The Russian center for Syrian reconciliation at the Hmeimim airbase registered seven violations of the ceasefire regime in two Syrian provinces in the last 24 hours, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

“The cessation of hostilities in Syria has been respected in general. However, a total of seven violations of the ceasefire regime have been registered, including five in the Aleppo province, and two — in the Latakia province,” the ministry said in a daily bulletin posted on the ministry’s website.

Meanwhile, Daesh terrorists are preparing an offensive on Syrian Arab Army positions near Aleppo, the bulletin said.

“According to information obtained from Aleppo locals, there are a lot of terrorists in the populated areas of Al-Safirah, Marran, Shamir, Um Adasa, Dayr Antah. We can conclude that the terrorists are getting ready for the big offensive on the Syrian government army’s position in Aleppo province,” the bulletin read,” the bulletin read.

ICTS was established in 1982 by former members of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency and El Al airline security agents, and has a major presence around the world in airport security including operations in the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Japan and Russia. ICTS uses the security system employed in Israel, whereby passengers are profiled to assess the degree to which they pose a potential threat on the basis of a number of indicators, including age, name, origin and behaviour during questioning.

Chairman of the Supervisory Board at ICTS is Menachem J. Atzmon. Atzmon is a former Likud party member who was indicted and convicted in 1996 in a fraud and embezzlement case relating to the misappropriation of funds raised by charities. Atzmon is also the CEO of the port authority of Rostock in Germany.

This will not, however, be the first time that ICTS has come under scrutiny for possible security lapses leading to a ‘Muslim terror attack’.

As the provider of security services to Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport and United Airlines and US Airways, the firm’s security system was criticized for somehow allowing erstwhile ‘underwear bomber’, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, to “slip through” and board Northwest Airlines Flight 253 to Detroit with explosive materials on Christmas day 2009.

The Christmas knicker bomber, as he came to be known, was not your usual disgruntled Arab or lowly Muslim acolyte. He was the son of Nigerian banking mogul and former Nigerian government minister Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, one of the richest men in Africa. We’re talking one of the African colonial elite here, an African version of the British ‘old boy’s network‘ While in London, his son, the knicker bomber lived in a ₤4 million apartment in Mansfield Street, in the city’s West End. He also enjoyed access to visas for several different countries, including the U.S.

Unlike most alleged Muslim terrorists who usually bring their passports to the scene of their ‘suicide attacks’ (and often leave them there for police to find) Abdulmutallab apparently arrived at Schipol airport to board his flight to the U.S. with a one way ticket, no luggage and without a passport.

Detroit attorney Kurt Haskell and his wife Lori

Now usually this would have spelled a premature end to his planned attack, but according to Detroit attorney and eyewitness to events at Schipol,
Kurt Haskell, Abdulmutallab benefited from the help of a sharply dressed Indian man who was able to escort the youngster to the boarding gate where he told the attendant that Abdulmutallab had no passport but should be allowed on the flight anyway. When the sharply dressed man was told that he would have to speak to the security manager, he did so and successfully planted the knicker bomber on the plane.

Now this requires some serious string pulling, and all the hoopla in the press at the time about whether or not the security system worked was just hubris, because if the knicker bomber appeared at the gate without a passport, it is unlikely that he went through the normal process up to that point, including check-in which requires passengers to show their passports.

In all probability, Abdulmutallab was escorted as a ‘VIP’ to the gate by the sharply dressed man. So how do two suspicious looking dudes, at least one of them without a passport and carrying bomb materials, get to the gate in an airport and then onto the flight? The answer is they don’t, unless they have some friends among the people running the security controls at the airport. In this case, ICTS.

Within a few months of the underwear attack, the US State Department admitted that it had known about Mutallab’s intentions for some time and had not revoked his entry visa to the USA because they, effectively, wanted to see what he would do.

“Revocation action would’ve disclosed what they were doing,” Kennedy said in testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security.

Allowing Adbulmutallab to keep the visa increased chances federal investigators would be able to get closer to apprehending the terror network he is accused of working with, “rather than simply knocking out one soldier in that effort.”

But ICTS’ security faux pas’ don’t end there. In December 2001, they somehow managed to let deranged shoe bomber Richard Reid, onto his Miami-bound flight in Paris, and this was after ICTS had cleared Reid through security at Amsterdam airport on a flight to Tel Aviv in July 2001 for what was apparently an all-expenses paid week-long trip to the Israeli city. What precisely he did there remains a mystery. Reid later said that ICTS/El Al had failed to detect that he had explosives in his shoes on the flight to Tel Aviv, an amazing revelation considering the Israeli airline’s tight security and the fact that, six months later, they were responsible for letting him board the Miami-bound flight with the very same type of ‘shoe bomb’. Israel had not informed British, American, or any other security agency of their concerns about Reid. Reid’s aunt, Claudette Lewis who raised Reid in south London, was quoted as saying she believed her nephew had been “brainwashed”.

ICTS also somehow missed several of the alleged 9/11 hijackers who allegedly flew out of Boston’s Logan airport on September 11th 2001. ICTS also handled security for London’s bus network during the July 7, 2005, ‘suicide’ bomb attacks. In fact, two of its subsidiaries, ICTS UK and ICTS Europe Systems, are based at Tavistock House, Tavistock Square in London, scene of the London Stagecoach bus bombing that day.

That’s quite a record, all in all. And we have to wonder how many terror attacks could have been prevented, how many innocent lives saved, how much further we might be today from a burgeoning police state, if outfits like ICTS and those that support them had not allowed so many unlikely and hapless ‘Muslim terrorists’ to “slip through”.

Of all the authoritarian ‘leaders’ that benefit from the insecurity created by ‘Muslim terrorism’, the political elite of the state of Israel benefit the most. And of all the people who suffer from terrorist attacks, people of Muslim faith suffer by far the most. Israel, a country created on stolen Palestinian land and surrounded by Muslims, requires the continued threat of ‘Islamic terrorism’ to justify its existence. In pushing this insane agenda so far, by encouraging Europe and the ‘West’ to adopt Israeli attitudes towards Palestinians, it seems that the conditions are being created whereby the events of Nazi Germany may well repeat, only this time with Muslims in the position of the Jews.

Social Services and child protection agencies are there to protect our children and ensure that they have the adequate and loving care they need—or so we thought.

Over the past few years, documentaries have exposed some of the most shocking and concerning issues within society. In fact, documentaries such as Blackfish, Making a Murderer and COWSPIRACY: The Sustainability Secret have gone on to become some of the most watched and talked about things on Netflix.

However, despite the important message that some of these documentaries carry, not all of them are as widely know. Traffic, is a documentary that uncovers the chilling truth about the inner workings of the child protection system. Created by Pete Middleton Pictures, Traffic exposes that social workers, judges, lawyers and guardians of the court all work together to secure the removal of children from their families and traffic them around the U.K. Why is this happening? Money. Thousands and thousands of pounds, in fact.

“If you don’t meet your target, you are also docked across the board in your entire grant. So, the incentive to find kids for adoption is overwhelming,” says one of the interviewees in the video.

Featured below is a 7.5 minute extract of the documentary. As you can see by watching the video, the documentary features interviews with MPs, officials within the child protection system and victims of this terrible practice.

Since the documentary’s release in 2014, Pete Middleton Picture created a second documentary, titled Traffic 2: Inside Child Protection, about the pressing subject and is scheduled to be released on the 20th April 2016.

The partial lull in fighting in Syria has enabled the country to export fruits and vegetables to Russia in what could eventually make it replace Turkey in supplies of food products to the country.

Kommersant business daily has reported that about 3,000 tons of oranges, lemons, grapefruit, tomatoes and cabbage from Syria were delivered to the Russian port of Novorossiysk last week.

The daily said the figure had been provided by Aslan Panesh, the managing director of Russia’s key food importer Adyg-Yurak.

Panesh has also emphasized in Kommersant’s report that his company has already started the related negotiations with local food retailers over selling Syrian fruits and vegetables.

“Poor quality packaging is still the problem which currently prevents us from regular supplies of Syrian fruit and vegetables to Russia,” he added in the report that was also carried by Russia Today.

Adyg-Yurak plans to invest in producing modern packaging in Syria in the next six months, Panesh added.

“The measure will enable the firm to import some 3,000-5,000 tons of Syrian fruit and vegetables weekly,” said the businessmen, stressing that the company had already invested over $3 million into logistical support. The overall investment will be up to $10 million, added Kommersant in its report.

Russia has imposed a food import ban on Turkey after a Turkish jet shot down one of its military planes over Syria in November.

Slavery: The Anniversary of the Official Ending of a System that Bankrolled and Civilized Cameron’s British Empire*

By Garikai Chengu

Friday [25th March 2016] marks the anniversary of the Parliamentary abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire. Over the course of three centuries, Britain became the largest slaving nation in the world and the slave trade grew to become Britain’s largest and most profitable industry. Britain generated an estimated equivalent of four trillion pounds on the unpaid labour of slaves.

Britain owes its very existence as a first world nation to the African slave trade. Great Britain’s economic way of life was formed by slavery: about it revolved, and on it depended, most of Britain’s other industries.

Fathers became ostentatiously wealthy constructing slave ships or owning huge plantations in the Caribbean; when they died, their sons inherited that wealth and chartered banks that have endured to this day such as Barclays Bank, they built factories, British railroad enterprises, invested in government securities, and speculated in new financial instruments. In due course, they donated their slave profits to build libraries, museums, botanical gardens, and British universities.

Slavery did not only build Britain, it civilized her.

At the height of the British Empire, London was the cultural and economic capital of the world, and today London remains one of the world’s wealthiest and most influential cities.

However, before the British slave trade began in the 1500s, over 90 percent of medieval London’s population was illiterate and the city had largely forgotten the technical advances of the Romans some 900 hundred years before. There were no street lamps or paved streets in London and garbage and human waste were simply thrown into the streets.

Between 1348 and 1665, there were 16 outbreaks of the plague in London, at times killing almost half of the city’s inhabitants. Most houses were made of wood, mud and dung. All of this occurred at a time when the great empires of the world were Black African empires, and the educational and cultural centres of the world were predominately African.

Whilst Europe was experiencing its Dark Age, which was a long period of intellectual, economic and cultural backwardness, Africans were experiencing an almost continent-wide renaissance. The leading civilizations of this African rebirth were the Benin Empire, Kingdom of Ghana and the Mali Empires.

Between the early 1500s and the early 1800s, millions of slaves were kidnapped from Ghana, Mali and across West Africa. By the mid-18th century, Britain was the biggest slaving nation, and Britain’s major ports, cities and canals were built on invested slave money.

Beyond any doubt it was the slave trade that raised London from an uncivilized medieval city to be the richest and most prosperous city in the world.

Slavery was integral to Great Britain’s economy from the Royal family to the Church of England on downwards. Britain’s slavers were defended before god by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and before parliament by politicians, like William Gladstone, himself the son of a wealthy plantation-owner.

In his famous 1944 book Capitalism and Slavery, the Trinidadian scholar Eric Williams illustrates how profits from slavery “fertilised” many branches of London’s economy and spurred England’s industrial revolution.

The processing and distribution of produce such as tobacco, sugar and cotton produced on plantations resulted in massive investment in British quaysides, warehouses, factories, trading houses and banks. Banking is currently Britain’s biggest industry and apart from the Barclays Brothers, who were slave traders, we also know of Barings and HSBC, which can be traced back to slaver Thomas Leyland’s banking house. The Bank of England’s founding is also inextricably linked to slave profits. Sir Richard Neave, who was the director of the bank for half a century, was also the chairman of the plunderous Society of West India Merchants.

British historian Robert Blackburn calculates that in 1770, total investments in the domestic British economy stood at £4 million, (or about £500 million in today’s money). This investment included the building of roads and canals, of wharves and harbours, of all new equipment needed by farmers and manufacturers, and of all the new ships sold to merchants in a period of one year.

Around the same time, British slave-based plantation and commercial profits came to £3.8 million (or about £450 million in contemporary terms). Clearly, slave based profits were so significant that they literally bankrolled Britain’s development and ascent into a first world nation.

The modern civilized world owes its very existence to the most uncivilized institution of slavery. In fact, slavery is not a product of Western civilization; Western civilization is a product of slavery. By fuelling the industrial revolution and propelling the mercantile expansion of the British Empire, slavery built the foundations of modern British civilization.

Throughout the ages monuments have epitomized and defined civilizations. Slavery had a profound impact on the development of British architecture from the great many monuments and statues across London, which celebrates Britain’s deep involvement in transatlantic slavery to the construction of countless ostentatious country houses.

Famous London landmarks and areas are also deeply intertwined with slavery. For instance, Sir Hans Sloane, whose statue stands in Sloane Square, was a principle shareholder of the plunderous Royal Africa Company, whose sigils was an Elephant and Castle, which gave its name to an area in south London. Sloane was also the President of the Royal Society and founder of the British Museum.

Museums are a quintessential symbol of modern civilization. Prior to the era of British slavery, museums tended to be small and private, open only to the aristocracy of a given nation. During the height of British slavery in the 19th century, the modern museum as we know it began to take shape. With plunder streaming in from all corners of the British Empire, the modern museum was born. The British Museum was created largely as a repository for artefacts looted from Africa between the 17th and 19th centuries.

Arguably the greatest contribution that slavery made to British civilization was how slaves freed up time for British slave owners and their families to engage in social activities and sustained experiments that led to inventions that propelled the industrial revolution. For instance, slavery financed the experiments of James Watt, inventor of the first really efficient steam engine.

Many historians agree that slavery was also crucial in developing British democracy, since it allowed men greater time for public participation.

Slave ships were also the principle reason for Britain’s explosion in medical advances. British slave ships were essentially floating laboratories, offering medical researchers a chance to examine the course of various diseases in somewhat controlled, quarantined environments. British doctors and researchers gleaned priceless epidemiological information on a range of diseases including malaria, smallpox, cholera, yellow fever, dysentery, typhoid, and so on, from the bodies of dying and dead slaves. Conditions on slave ships were so bad that, in his 1789 speech opening the parliamentary debate on the slave trade William Wilberforce estimated that half of the slaves, or six million souls, transported never made it to their destination.

As Professor Eric Williams explains, Britain ultimately abolished slavery, not for moral reasons, but simply because abolition was now more profitable than continuing sugar plantations. A century of sugar cane raising had exhausted the soil of the islands, and the plantations had become unprofitable. It became more profitable for British slave owners to simply sell the slaves to the government than to continue operations.

In 1833 the British Government paid slave-owners the equivalent of £17 billion in compensation, or roughly 40 percent of the national budget. British Prime Minister David Cameron’s cousin Sir James Duff was one of many British slave owners who received his share of billions of pounds for having had the privilege of exploiting slaves to enrich himself. The slaves themselves received nothing by way of compensation.

The Caricom group of Caribbean nations has recently put pressure on David Cameron for Britain to formally apologize for slavery and pay reparations. Mr. Cameron’s recent response before the Jamaican Parliament was to refuse to apologize and to tell Jamaicans to simply “move on”.

According to one estimate by Harpers Magazine, slaves between 1619 and 1865, when slavery was ended performed 222,505,049 hours of forced labour. Compounded at interest and calculated in today’s currency, this adds up to trillions of dollars. In fact, more riches flowed to Britain from the slave economy of Jamaica than all of the original American thirteen colonies combined. It is little wonder why David Cameron is keen to ignore any discussion with Jamaica about fair reparations.

Every year representatives of the German Finance Ministry and representatives of European Holocaust survivors meet to discuss reparations.

So far, Germany has paid $89 billion in compensation to Jewish victims of Nazi crimes. The Jewish claim to reparations is clearly just and so too is the Caribbean’s claim to slavery reparations. So one wonders if Mr. Cameron would tell Jewish victims not to accept reparations money and to simply “move on” as he told Jamaicans?

The racial hypocrisy of the British government is clear: European Jews deserve billions in compensation but Africans deserve not even an apology, despite modern British capitalist civilization owing its very existence to slavery.

Nations must not be defined merely by what they decide to remember, but more importantly by what they choose to forget. During slavery, ordinary Britons may not have known the brutal subtleties of how sugar lumps arrived at their tables, but people today must not forget how the brutality of slavery not only built the prosperous Great Britain that we know today, but also how it civilized her.

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Quote…

Peace be upon you and peace be upon us.
May You be in peace and may we be in peace.
Peace be upon those who returned the greeting and even upon those who did not.
Peace, in the name of the lord of peace, the lord of mankind, the god of eternity.
Peace in which we prospered.
Peace mixed with the earth of this country.
Peace in which we no longer live.
Peace which no longer lives in us.
Peace we keep an eye on while it packs its bags.
To abandon our lands, little by little.
And it is replaced by surrender and submission to an islamisation in which there is no islam.
As if the islam of our grandparents no longer had anything to do with us.
Do you know why peace is abandoning us?
Do you know why darkness is all around us?
To put it simply, because we are a society that fears.
We are a society afraid of difference.
My words will not please some of you, or most of you, or all of you - i know.
But i will say them because i refuse to be one of the herd.
We are a society which refuses to admit that it is a society that lives in ignorance.
We are a society that shots with all audacity and pretends that it carries a different message.
We are a society that loves to claim superiority without having a valid reason.
And pretends that it is an educated society. It is sickening!
Among us, the acceptance of difference is nothing but a cover.
The difference in colour does us harm.
The difference in shape does us harm.
The difference in thinking does us harm.
The difference in religion does us harm.
Even the difference in gender does us harm.
That is why we try to kill any difference in our midst.
We have turned into a lethal poison for each other.
We are a society more stupid than stupidity itself.
Yes, we are a society more stupid that stupidity itself.
We fight over silly things, over delusions, over superstitions
While always refusing to look into the root of the problem.
And none of us is innocent of that. No!
No citizens nor politicians.
No those who find comfort in silence.
Nor those who pretend to be saints.
Nor those who follow the west blindly.
Nor those who pretend to go back to the glory of the caliphate and the slave markets.
And to the amputation of the limbs of those who differ.
Today, let us try to look inside ourselves
Inside the depth of our souls.
Let us try to embrace our souls.
Let us try to embrace our differences with our souls.
Here i am, before you, with my colour, with my hair, with my poetry, with my peculiarities, with my ideas.
I am not afraid of you.
I don’t fear that you’re different from me because i am part of you and you are part of me.
Let us create art. Let us grasp the dream.
So we can erect a culture without stupidity,
So our sophistication becomes the best of caliphates.
Let us melt away the traditions, the classes, the types, the ideas, the colours and the religions.
So we see nothing except the human being.

Dance of the Heart

Rejuvenate your Life with Aloe Vera

The pain you create now is always some form of non acceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is.

On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgement.

On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity.

The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment , and this in turn depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind.

The mind always seeks to deny the Now and to escape from it.

In other words, the more you are identified with your mind, the more you suffer.
Or you may put it like this the more you are able to honour and accept the Now,the more you are free of pain, of suffering and free of egoic mind.

Why does the mind habitually deny or resist the NOW?

Because it cannot function and remain in control without time,which is past and future,so it perceives the timeless Now as threatening.

Time and mind are infact inseparable .

Sunday Wire

Reader’s Reflections…

From Robert on San Francisco Judges Dismiss 66,000 Arrest Warrants against the Homeless*

Living on the streets cuts an average of 25 years from a person's life and degrades the quality of life for everyone. Another feature of the homeless population in San Francisco is that many of these people are simply too ill to care for themselves. We're almost half a century into the failure of the social experiment that closed the State Hospitals and no closer to ending the experiment now than when our media first noticed the experiment had failed in the 1980's.

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From Chatty on One Corrupt President Ousted*
What do you know, a democratic breath of fresh air SOMEWHERE in the world...amazing. I'm glad the people's voices were heard and the police did their jobs. Fantastic, and I hope South Korea can heal from this and get good leadership.

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From Joann on One Corrupt President Ousted*

Such a sorry business, sorry for the South Korean people, and sorry for former President Park Geun-hye (so foolish and weak). But I am very glad truth was revealed, and we may hope for fair punishment, and perhaps rehabilitation, involving prison time. This needs to become a world-wide trend.

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From Necltr on World Bank Declares itself Above the Law*
World Bank, World Loan Shark, to use selected politicians and troops to take over every nation and all of humanity

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From TheChattyIntrovert on India’s Cashless Villages not Really There Yet, But the Nightmare Has Begun*

I'm too paranoid to believe in a cashless society myself--too much identity theft here in the states, and too damned easy when everything's done electronically.

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From Mark on Jury Refuses to Convict Activist for Shutting Down Pipeline*

This is why the ruling elite have nearly eliminated jury trials.
If you didn’t know that your democratic rights to trials by jury had been eliminated for everything but felony charges, see http://americanjurypower.org/home/no_right.php and don’t miss the supreme court case at the link in that article in which 5 so-called conservative, strict constructionist justices found an invisible word in 2 clauses in that quaint old constitution in the ruling elite’s latest effort to convert a justice system designed to be controlled by the people into one controlled by the ruling elite.

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From N on Scientists Find Fluoride Causes Hypothyroidism Leading To Depression, Weight Gain, and Worse…*
For ambitious global tyrants, fluoridation is part of a win-win-win-... program; for at least 6.5 billion people it is lose-lose-lose... Lose mental capacity of ourselves and children, lose length of life, lose, free will ... For the Globalists, win a servile, depopulated humanity with no ability to know what is happening to them, let alone a capacity to solve their problems.

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From M… on New Report Exposes Rockefeller Dynasty’s Role in “Climate” Scam*
John D., Sr. had a brother, William Avery, with whom he founded Standard Oil and worked until William's death. The families still work cooperatively, like the Rothschilds, but in a smaller way. When you think of petroleum and banking in this country, think Rockefeller. Their man Nixon took us off the gold standard and prevented the silver certificate, replacing precious metals with the petrodollar. Think of global power possibilities with a monopoly of that liquid black gold, especially when accompanied with the fiction of supply limitation held for many decades.

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From Neben on The Taino of the Caribbean: the People Who Do Not Exist

I am Taino and Caiqueto, living in Georgia. We must unite here in the continental U.S.

My family are indigenous to "Hispaniola", "Puerto Rico", Aruba and Curacao. I have family members in Florida, New York, and other states.

We do and have always existed. These settlers and colonists need to be told our lives matter.

Even if our African brothers and sisters were brought here, or even travelled here on their own (many did), they became us. Not we became them. When you immigrate you assume the tribal identities and customs of the host nation. These colonialists know this so they lie and say our people no longer exist, and/or say that only mixed people and descendants of black slaves exist in the Caribbean. These are all lies. They have brainwashed people into voiding our birthright and inheritance!!!!

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From Chief Pedro Guanikeyu Torres on The Taino of the Caribbean: the People Who Do Not Exist

I find this blog article most interesting and it made me smile at the same time to see an old letter that my tribal council and I had published in Puerto Rico some 46 years ago and addressed to the Puerto Rican people as it make me feel really old today at 65 year of age today. Respectfully yours, Chief Pedro Guanikeyu Torres, Jatibonicu Taino People of Boriken (Puerto Rico) Tribal Government of the Jatibonicu Taino People of Puerto Rico

Moral Tales

“To be in ‘Islam’ is to be in that state of willingness to surrender, to let go of anything. It is the beginning of the awakening of intelligence . If you’re willing to let go of everything, whatever anxieties, fears, expectations , or desires you have, then your energy is available. Your intelligence sharper. Your actions more successful because you can see whether they relate or not.” – Sheikh Fadhlalla Haeri

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Community Notice Board

The topocentric New Moon Conjunction for the lunar month of Sha'aban will occur on Wednesday, the 26th of March 2017, at 22:32 AEST (10:32pm Sydney time).

The correct date to observe the crescent of Sha'aban is upon sunset of Thursday, the 27th of April 2017.

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A Sacred Conversation
Tasting the Sweetness of Prayer and Worship by Unraveling the Secrets Within. Practical steps in improving Khushu’ (Inner Concentration) in Salah and other forms of Worship in Everyday Life.
The greatest month descends upon us very soon, the light of Ramadan is fast appearing! Ustadha YASMIN MOGAHED (USA) delivers this FULL DAY Course for the 1st time ever highlighting and demonstrating Key Practical Steps in improving one’s daily relationship with Allah.
The course will cover:
Life’s Forgotten Purpose: Prayer
Practical Steps in Improving One’s Salah and Khushu (concentration)
Worshipping Allah in Every Day Life
Why are my prayers (Dua) not answered? Steps in getting Duas answered.
Following faith in testing modern times, steps in upholding identity.
Developing a sacred relationship with Allah
Searching for God in Everyday Life
SPECIAL FEATURE FOR THE 1ST TIME:
Exclusive Launch and Live Interview based on Yasmin Mogahed’s NEW Book: Love and Happiness. Purchase the copy & have it signed on the day!
Open Q&A Session
Special Guest Speaker:
Ustadha Yasmin Mogahed (USA)

Price: Early Bird discount: £30

Price after 5th May 2017: £35
Date: Sunday 21st May 2017
Time: 10:30am-6:30pm (Doors open from 9:30pm)
Venue: London Muslim Centre (Full details upon registration)
For more info and to book, please visit: www.alburujpress.com

The Radical Middle Way
{Surely they who divided their religion into parts and became sects, you have no concern with them; their affair is only with Allah, then He will inform them of what they did” – An.Anam 6:159).